[Wikipedia-l] An idea

[David 'DJ' Hedley]

I think that it could be a good idea, especially if stretched to crediting
authors for their articles if they have a real name (via a template at the
top of the talk page, or bottom of the article possibly). The problems are,
obviously, that this causes problems for younger Wikipedians in that they
could never have a degree at the age of 15, or whatever.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 1:57 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea


> I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
>
> Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that
> we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but
> the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is
> written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real
> Professionals.  As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for
> people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
>
> However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise
> surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort.  And of
> course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
>
> Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it
> is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to
> bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start
> thinking about and discussing more generally.
>
> Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling
> something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews.  In order to
> increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it
> possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify
> themselves by their Real Names.
>
> We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of
> credentials.  People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm
> their credentials.  When you do this, a small icon appears by your name
> in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of
> the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
>
> What kinds of credentials would be acceptable?  This could be totally
> open to a community process.  Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make
> sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing
> Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
>
> Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or
> Redhat.  Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by
> people who have advanced licenses.  Published books might count as a
> credential.  Magazine articles.  Awards, recognitions of all kinds.
> Positions held in relevant organizations.
>
> Have you won a prize at a dog show?  Then this is a credential which
> testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
>
> Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect
> our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture.  First, anyone who ever
> suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk
> in the head with a WikiClueStick.  Second, it should be made clear at
> every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and
> completely optional.
>
> The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are.
> Why should the world listen to us about anything?  People think, and not
> unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that.  As it
> turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although
> we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential
> fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that,
> hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons*
> after all.
>
> --Jimbo
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